"The most important priority is for us to come together and recognize that all of science is at stake," says presidential science adviser D. Allan Bromley. "I see it as a tremendously important task to relate the values -- and the value -- of science to the political system."
The views of Bromley, who as the country's highest ranking science policy official has the ear of President George Bush, are important and unquestionably influential. Also influential are the views of such scientific luminaries as Nobel physicists Leon Lederman, Philip Anderson, and Jerome Friedman; molecular biologist Charles Cantor, one of the driving forces behind the Human Genome Project; and the venerable Nobel chemist Linus Pauling--just a few of the dozens of eminent researchers and policymakers interviewed by editors of The Scientist during the final weeks of 1990